


We Are All Grounders

by eternaleponine



Series: The 100 Clexa Reunion [6]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 20:23:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5389040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke and Lexa talk over breakfast about whether peace is really possible.</p>
<p>Immediately follows <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/5336402">Wanheda</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Are All Grounders

"What was that for?" Lexa asked when Clarke let her go. 

"For that," Clarke said, tracing the edge of her lips as they curved into a gentle smile. _For that and because I needed to do something that I thought was probably stupid but turned out not to be before facing another thing that I'm pretty sure will be stupid... unless all of your words are more than just wishes._ But the second part of it stayed locked in her head. 

"Come," Lexa said. "Let's eat."

The very suggestion was enough to make Clarke's stomach growl, and she couldn't remember the last time she'd felt as if she'd actually had enough. Even with everything that Lexa had brought her, she'd been careful to ration it, because there was no guarantees there would be more where that came from. 

She fell in half a step behind Lexa, at her left shoulder because if it came to it, they could be back to back and Lexa could have her sword free more easily than if Clarke was on her other side. She felt the back of Lexa's hand brush hers, and for a single insane second she thought of tangling their fingers together and holding on, but then the first person nodded their acknowledgement of Lexa with a soft murmured 'Heda', and then their eyes darted to her and widened just a fraction (or maybe she just imagined it) and she knew that the last thing that she needed to do right now was call more attention to herself, no matter what Lexa thought her standing might be among the Grounders now.

They made their way to another room (and wasn't that something? A building with walls and corridors and rooms? She had thought maybe that had all been done away with in favor of tents and structures that could be easily deconstructed and rebuilt... but of course she had mostly seen their war camps, hadn't she? And TonDC, but that was a village. This was their capital, and it was more permanent and more... civil, Clarke guessed, but that seemed like the wrong word. Civilized, maybe, at least in the way that she understood it. 

But Lexa had told her that, hadn't she? That Polis was different? She'd said that it would change the way that Clarke thought of her people. 

They got in a line (not a long one) and waited their turn to get served a bowl of what appeared to be some kind of grain soup... porridge, like in the old fairy tales that Clarke had read when she was so small? There were bigger chunks mixed in, and Clarke thought they were probably nuts, and then something thick and golden drizzled over the top. 

Lexa found a seat at the end of one long table and nodded for Clarke to sit down as well, nudging the bench across from her out with the toe of her boot. She watched Clarke as she sat, and kept watching as she spooned up a mouthful of the thick, sticky mixture. 

The golden liquid was sweet, almost _too_ sweet, and it coated the inside of her mouth, making the otherwise nearly flavorless grain goo palatable. "What...?" she started to ask, and then stopped herself. "Honey?"

Lexa smiled, and god, Clarke could get used to that but she knew that she shouldn't. "Yes. Haven't you had it before?"

"No bees in space," Clarke said. "And even though it keeps forever, there was none left by the time I was born."

"How did you know, then?" Lexa asked. 

"Books," Clarke said. "In one of them there is a bear – Winnie the Pooh, he's called – who loves honey so much that he'll do just about anything for it. One time he got his head stuck in a honey jar." 

"How did he do that?" Lexa asked. 

"Trying to lick the last of it from the bottom of the jar, of course," Clarke said. 

"This is what you learn when you are small? About bears getting heads stuck in jars?"

"They're stories meant for children," Clarke said. "We have to start somewhere, don't we?" 

"We learn how to kill bears, and skin them, and how to cook them," Lexa said. "And how not to get killed by them. There is no honey involved."

"You don't have stories?" Clarke asked. "I find that hard to believe."

Lexa shrugged. "We have stories of warriors and battles," she said. "We have stories about how to survive. Those are the stories our children need to hear."

"You're such an Eeyore," Clarke said, even though she knew that Lexa wouldn't know what it meant. She assumed that Lexa would ask, unless she'd somehow managed to offend her.

Apparently she hadn't. "What is an Eeyore?" 

"He's a rather gloomy donkey," Clarke said. "He's friends with Pooh."

"Your people are strange, Clarke of the Sky People."

"They were your people too, back when these stories were written," Clarke said. "We didn't make them up on the Ark. They were from before. Long, long before."

"Sometimes I forget that," Lexa said, after swallowing a bite of porridge. 

"Forget what?" Clarke asked. 

"That we were once all the same people." Lexa stirred the mixture and steam rose up. She blew it away. "When we were still trying to make peace between our people – before _we_ were trying, even, when it was Kane who was acting as your ambassador – Indra told me that there could be no understanding between Sky People and Tree People. That we were born of different worlds. And that's true, we were, those of us who are alive now. But a long time ago, but not so long when you think of how long the earth has been here, we were all one people. We were all, as you call us, grounders. And now we all are again."

"And yet people insist on drawing lines between one group and another," Clarke said, "instead of working together for the greater good. A hundred years later, or close enough, and we're right back to being at each other's throats, as if that wasn't what had gotten us all to this point in the first place."

"I know," Lexa said. "Why do you think I have worked for peace?"

"Do you really think it's possible?" Clarke asked.

Lexa nodded, the slightest dip of her chin. "I have to," she said. "Otherwise, what is the point?"

"I don't know," Clarke admitted. "I have no idea."

"Was there no strife on your Ark?" Lexa asked. "Did people not draw lines there?"

"They did," Clarke said. "Like... things could have been equal, if we'd tried. Everyone could have gotten the same rations, that kind of thing. But one job was valued more than another, and entire stations were thought less of than others, and it... It wasn't perfect. But we weren't all killing each other, so I guess that's something." She grimaced. "I guess we didn't have to, though. If you stepped out of line, even a little, you were floated."

Lexa's eyebrows went up. "Floated?"

"Put out an airlock. Into space. There's no oxygen in space, so you die. Although maybe the cold gets you first. I guess at that point it doesn't really matter, does it?"

"No," Lexa said. "It doesn't. Dead is dead." She leaned her chin on one hand. "Your people are just as capable of brutality as my people are," she said. 

"We don't torture people," Clarke said.

Her brows shot up even higher. "I think Lincoln would say differently."

Clarke frowned. "I... There is no excuse for what we did to Lincoln," she said. "I could try to convince you that it was justified, but in the end, it wasn't. We tortured him looking for answers. Maybe... maybe we could have approached, tried for peace then. I don't know. I can't go back and change it. If I could... I would probably change a lot of things. But that's not how life works."

"No, it's not," Lexa said. Her voice was soft, and the look in her eyes gentle. She reached across the table to lay her hand over Clarke's, and Clarke couldn't help glancing around, wondering if anyone was noticing, and if they were how they were reacting. Not that any of them were likely to show any kind of reaction at all, if the Grounders she had met up to this point had been any indication.

Clarke let the touch linger for a moment before pulling her hand back to steady her bowl as she scraped up the last few bites. "Thank you," she said.

"For what?" Lexa asked.

"Breakfast?"

"Why are you thanking me?" Lexa asked. "I didn't make it."

"Could you?" Clarke asked, suddenly curious. "Make breakfast, I mean? Cook?"

Lexa's lips twisted, and for a second Clarke thought that she had upset her somehow, but no, she was trying not to smile, maybe even to laugh. "That depends on who you ask," she said. Clarke cocked her head, waiting for her to elaborate. "If you ask a warrior who hasn't eaten in the better part of two days and who barely takes the time to chew, then yes, I can cook. If you ask someone who actually thinks that food is more than meat that has been cooked enough to stop bleeding... then no."

Clarke grinned. "I'll keep that in mind."

"I did not have much need to learn," Lexa said. "If I had to, I can keep myself alive. But it would not be very enjoyable."

"What's your favorite food?" Clarke asked. 

"Cherries," Lexa replied without hesitation. "The trees are beautiful when they bloom in the spring, and the fruit is better than anything you can imagine. Unless you had cherries in space?"

"No," Clarke said. "No space cherries."

"What did you have?" Lexa asked. "You cannot have had meat."

"No," Clarke said. "We had... protein? Grown in a lab? Some fresh food, but not a lot. Mostly we had a protein and carbohydrate mixture that was shaped into bars, and fortified with vitamins and stuff, and it was like... you were always hungry. Even though you were getting enough calories to keep your body going – they made sure of that – it was never enough to make you not hungry, or at least not for long. It was completely unsatisfying."

Lexa grimaced. "That sounds horrible."

"It's better than starving," Clarke said. "Which... how bad is winter?" She had read about winter in books, and she got the impression that it could be really bad, that if people were going to starve it was usually during winter because they didn't have enough food to get them through, but different parts of the world had different weather, and in some places winter wasn't as bad as others. But that was all based on before they'd broken the earth, and quite possibly the weather with it, so she didn't know what the reality of it might be now.

"It depends on the year," Lexa said. "Some are bad, some are not so bad."

"Is there any way to know?" Clarke asked.

Lexa shrugged. "Not for certain. There are sometimes indicators, but nothing that can be relied on entirely."

"And what do those indicators... indicate," Clarke wrinkled her nose, "this year."

"This year... this year may be bad," Lexa admitted. "It is part of the reason that I wanted to find you. Maybe it will be wrong, but I didn't want one of my patrols to come back reporting that you had been found frozen to death."

"So you had them looking for me?" Clarke asked.

"No," Lexa said. "Not specifically. But they will report to me any Skaikru that seems to be out of place."

"So my people are prisoners in their camp?"

"No," Lexa said, "but most of them do not seem inclined to leave it." Clarke could see the hesitation in her face before she added, "You can go see them, if you wish. See for yourself how they are."

"No," Clarke said. "No, I can't go back there." She pushed back the bench and picked up her bowl, then realized she didn't know what she was supposed to do with it. She was grateful when Lexa stood as well, and showed her where to return it so that it could be washed and used by the next hungry mouth that needed feeding. 

"I will not make you do anything that you do not wish to do, Clarke," Lexa said. "I pr—"

"Don't," Clarke said. "Don't make me a promise that you might have to break."

Lexa pursed her lips, then nodded. "All right," she said. "But I will not make you go back there unless there is no other choice. We will go when you're ready."

"We?" Clarke looked at her as she fell into step beside her, not knowing where they were going.

"If you want me to go with you," Lexa said. "If you would rather not, then I won't."

"Have you seen them?" Clarke asked, because she couldn't not. Even if she wasn't ready to face going back to her people, she still wanted to know that they were okay. 

"No," Lexa admitted. "I don't think that I would be very welcome." She lifted one shoulder and let it fall, a half-hearted, dismissive shrug. "I cannot blame them for not trusting me. I just keep my people in check, and if they choose to approach me, they will find the way open to them. Otherwise... sometimes it is better to give wounds time to heal."

Clarke nodded. That's what she'd been trying to do, out there alone in the woods, but alone like that she hadn't been able to get away from her own thoughts, her own guilt, and she'd picked and picked at the wound so that it couldn't heal, and told herself she deserved the pain. (She still wasn't sure that she didn't.) Last night had been the first night that she hadn't laid awake for hours, her thoughts chasing themselves in obsessive circles, searching for some other answer, some other way that it all could have played out. She never found one, but it didn't stop her from trying. Last night had been the first night she hadn't started awake in the darkness, jolted out of sleep by the need to escape her nightmares. She hadn't even realized it until just now, and she looked at Lexa out of the corner of her eye, wondering if it had only been coincidence, or if it was somehow meaningful. Maybe she'd just been too tired even to dream.

Or maybe she'd actually been, just for a moment, safe enough to actually let herself be happy.


End file.
